Harkat is back with the 16mm Film Festival, a festival exclusively screening works made with celluloid film. This includes all formats of celluloid based work, such as 8mm, 16mm & 35mm, found footage and more. This year also marks 100 years since the introduction of 16mm film, the artist’s format. As an ode to art and film, we remind ourselves of why this medium is our artistic choice. The poetry and politics of it, the energy, craft and chemistry, the nature of it. The labour and slowness it demands, the art and craft of making with it, the discoveries and happy accidents.

This year’s curatorial takes refuge in poetry —

The morning sun erupted with streaks of gold. I peered longingly far and close. Someone said the boat was too small. Many eyes. Intense labour. Calm waters. Rough skies. A silent echo to feed a beating heart. Along with strewn flowers lay a thought, a memory, a poem. All wrapped in rivers of dew. If a song came my way, I sang it. If a picture appeared, I dreamt it. If a stray flower appeared, I picked it up to give it the love I long for. An evening cloud floated in the sky of my dreams. It promised dreams in inky blue. I looked down at the earth and became one with the night. Filling my heart. Mourning the pain. A woman appeared with a camera. She sat by the banks. A sigh, a step, a lyric. An infinite world in a tear on her cheek. An image forms. A dream begins again. I wake.